


Fixer Upper

by rainbowBarnacle



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Beforus, Culling, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Helmsman, Mental Abuse, Non-Sgrub AU, Other, Rape, Sexual Assault, noncon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2018-04-08 21:09:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4320792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowBarnacle/pseuds/rainbowBarnacle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Well?” he prompts you incredulously. “I like to think I'm an all around nice guy, why doesn't he <i>want me?</i>”</p><p>His body language sets off alarms in your head—he's past the point where he'd fall into a depressed slump. If anything, his movements are sharper, his fangs more visible with each word, his fins flared and bristling. He's a walking time bomb, and you have a horrible feeling that you're going to be the one that has to defuse him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VastDerp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VastDerp/gifts).



> A giant, massive thank-you to [Makizushi](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Makizushi/works) and [coldhope](http://archiveofourown.org/users/coldhope/pseuds/coldhope/works) for being excellent beta readers. I highly, highly recommend reading their stuff, they are completely brilliant writers.

Cronus rips open a fresh pack of cigarettes, puts one to his lips, and struggles with the lighter. It sparks once, twice, and dies. He bares all his teeth, his hands shaking like he might throttle it, and just before he explodes into curses you concentrate your psi briefly and set the tip smoldering. He looks at you, puffs once, and sighs smoke through his gills.

“Thanks, chief.”

You only wish it was the tip of his bulge you were setting on fire, but it's better than having him put a fist through your gaming console again. The last time that happened it took a whole perigee for him to get you a new one.

“I just, I don't _get_ it,” he starts pacing again. His angry gesticulating leaves smoke trails that would sting your eyes if you weren't wearing your helmet. As it is, you can already feel your useless little airways shriveling up. “How blatant do I have to fucking _be_? We've been pale for how many sweeps now? I thought he _knew_ me! All I know is I spent hours on that ballad and all he can say is 'Y9u sh9uld 6e very pr9ud' like it ain't the reddest goddamn sentiment I ever put to lyrics.”

You shift in your helming chair and roll your eyes. You're stuck there until he unlocks you, and until he does, it swallows your legs up to the knees and your arms up to the elbows in weirdly warm, fleshy cylinders, unseen biowires burrowing painlessly into your hands and legs and feet. Thicker cables growing from the back of the chair are docked to the back of your helmet, so you look like a villain from _Stargate Alternia._

It all connects you to the ship in a way you can _feel_ but can't articulate. If you let yourself sink far enough into it, you can almost escape your meat entirely and enjoy a half-life among the circuits and numbers, where everything is finally _fast_ enough to keep up with your spazzed out pan.

Until Cronus calls you back, at least. There are overrides and subroutines that keep you from going full-on robot, and he can put you on manual if he thinks you're not behaving. But the more you convince him that you're a good battery, the more freedoms he allows you.

“I just can't believe it. What do I gotta do to get _through_ to him?”

You don't answer. You know better by now. Never, ever discuss romance with Cronus; at best he'll laugh and call you an idiot and at worst he'll wrap his cold hands around your throat and shake you until your teeth rattle and you bite your tongue because just what the fuck are you even implying you nasty little shitblood, _**are you MAKING FUN OF ME?**_

“Well?” he prompts you incredulously. “I like to think I'm an all around nice guy, why doesn't he _want me_?”

His body language sets off alarms in your head—he's past the point where he'd fall into a depressed slump. If anything, his movements are sharper, his fangs more visible with each word, his fins flared and bristling. He's a walking time bomb, and you have a horrible feeling that you're going to be the one that has to defuse him.

He glares at you and sighs through his nose. “God. Why the hell am I even asking _you_ anyway, it's not like you have the romantic intuition evolution gave a lumpsucker. Are you even listening in there? _Hello?_ ” You shrink back as he strides over and raps his knuckles against your helmet, and his lips twist into a smirk. “Oh, you _were._ You're so good. Tell you what, I know one way you can help a bro out.”

Your blood runs cold. “Uh--”

Cronus rests a hand on one of the cylinders encasing your arm and you cringe away from it as if he was touching your actual hand. It's the one holding the cigarette, and it's all you can do not to puke your guts all over his stupid designer jeans as the smoke invades your sinuses. You can _taste_ it. Within moments your lungs are hitching in stifled little coughs.

“Aww, is this botherin' you, pal?” He taps ash into one of the many trays he keeps nearby and probably hasn't ever emptied. “I keep tellin' you if you'd just start up yourself you wouldn't turn into such a fuckin' sissy every time I light up. Might even give us more in common, did you ever think of that?”

“NO. No no _no no no_ \--”

Rolling his eyes, he tugs one of your horns back and forth until you twist away. “Fiiiine, you keep on bein' a complete downer in every respect, I dig, I dig. Hey, why don't you bring Kankri up on camera for me, Captor, let's see what he's up to.”

“Why don't you _CHOKE ON YOUR OWN NASTY BLONEBUGE._ ”

The lazy smile drops away and he moves in even closer until he's practically in your lap. His eyes bore through your visor like it's nothing as he grips your chin hard enough to hurt, his sour breath falling on your lips.

“How's about you do what I tell you to do, helmsman?” he says softly.

You shut your eyes and grimace. Behind him, one of your screens flickers on. Kankri is sitting in his block, drinking tea and speaking into his husktop's microphone. Cronus releases your chin and settles in next to you, draping one heavy arm over your shoulders like you're two flushcrushes watching a movie.

“There, that's more like it. Heh. Look at'im, ain't he cute?”

You might vomit.

“ _And so we see that the act of concealing one's bloodcaste is in and of itself an act of oppression, as it leaves those with cooler blood hues at the distinct disadvantage of being unable to atone for any transgressions, hypothetical or otherwise, that they might have perpetuated against the troll hiding their identity..._ ”

Cronus sighs and tilts his head against yours. “God, that voice. I could listen to him read the hemo-directory and it would be an, an _experience_ , you know? His voice is an experience.”

You squirm as his arm tightens around you, his other hand drifting up your thigh. He’s touched you like this many times before on nights when he was feeling particularly maudlin, and every time you always wonder if he’s going to do more than grope you.

“ _Hey_. Quit fidgeting,” he mutters, but he's still too caught up in what's on the screen to sound seriously angry. You freeze up anyway, your eyes locked on that hand as he pets you idly, mindlessly, like someone stroking a purrbeast.

God, please let this be all that he does.

“ _Trapped this way, these so-called quote unquote highbloods are unable to enjoy the triumph of overcoming their own innate flaws and prejudices, whether they are consciously aware of them or not..._ ”

Cronus's breathing has gone slow and heavy. His lips are parted, and leaned up against you as he is it feels obscene, like something you're not supposed to witness. He whispers something you can't make out and palms your inner thigh, kneading you with prickly sharp claws, and you feel him shudder.

Just pretend it's someone else.

“ _One could say that the privileged suffer in a unique way, trapped like flies in the sticky web of their own assumptions, bigotry, and misconceptions._ ”

“God, boy, you're so gorgeous,” he whispers against your neck. 

You make a strangled whine of protest through clenched teeth, but you don’t say one word. Words don’t work anymore. Words have left you. It’s like the link between thinking and talking has been severed, leaving your pan awash in panicky static the more Cronus’s hand creeps upward--and then you go rigid, your breath coming in unsteady gasps as he starts kneading your nook. In spite of everything it’s only a matter of seconds before the fabric of your flight suit is treacherously wet.

“That good? Wanna get you off so bad...”

Pretend it's not him, it's not him, just look anywhere else but him, if you just don't piss him off it'll be over faster just get through this get it over with don't think about it don't think about it don't think about it--

“ _I propose that it is the responsibility of those who are exploited and abused to educate those who would mistreat them, for who else has the necessary experience and insight needed to persuade and inform an otherwise recalcitrant and headstrong aristocracy?_ ”

Cronus removes his arm from around your shoulders and you're left feeling light and dizzy in its absence. For a moment he stops fondling you in favor of activating the ship’s autocruise and unlocking your chair. The bioware withdraws from your limbs and slithers back to wherever it lives when it's not in you. He takes your helmet off too, and oh god, you can't do this, _you can't do this_ \--

He maneuvers you like a doll, thoughtlessly, barely looking at you, and in a matter of moments you're stuck perched on his lap while he sprawls in your chair with his legs spread wide and his head tilted back, his hands roving greedily over you.

“C'mon, get my pants open, lovely--”

You duck your head, trying vainly to obscure your face in your hair, but he's not looking at you, not even when he guides your hands to his jeans. The button is easy, but the zipper has you flummoxed. You fumble with it with shaking fingers, terrified of his bulge but even more terrified of what he'll do if you refuse, and god damn it GOD MOTHER FUCKING ASS SMELLING SHUNTFUCKING THROBSTALK STRAIGHT UP YOUR OWN GROSS SHITTY NOOK you can’t make it fucking WORK, your hands might as well not even belong to you for all the good you’re doing--

“ _“While it can be argued that well-meaning privileged individuals could offer their own thoughts on the literal subjugation of the downtrodden, it is not their place to assume that they are truly intimate with the specific hardships that warmer hued trolls face._ ”

Cronus frowns and his eyes flicker from the screen to you. You break out in a cold sweat all over and tug at the zipper wildly. It’s getting harder to grasp, stinging your fingers as you pull and pull, and oh god you have to fucking hurry, every second you don’t unzip him brings you closer to him flipping his shit--

Then the fucking thing finally rasps down. He relaxes again and turns his attention to the screen as the length of him comes arching up and out of his underwear. It's only when he grabs your wrist and clumsily guides your hand to his bulge that you realize he hasn't been talking to you, he's been talking to--

“ _Kankri_ \--” he moans as he closes your fingers around him and starts moving your hand in swift, firm strokes, his eyes locked on the screen over your shoulder. “Oh, fuck, ooh, _oooh_ \--”

_Oh shit he’s never done this before, he’s never made you--_

Frantic, you stroke him faster and try not to look, just watching how your arm moves with a kind of detached intensity, hoping that if you get him off it’ll be over quicker. At this he throws his head back and keens, his hips moving faster, and there's a distinctly surprised note that makes you think he didn't expect you to do this--

“ _And so, to borrow a phrase from my favorite ancient poet Troll Justin Bieber, we as a whole must remember the uplifting and beautiful concept of_ amor omnibus idem _, or, in baser layman’s terms, that love is the same for one and all._ ”

“Ah, fuck, fuck, honey _please_ , oh fuck--” Abruptly, he wrenches your hand away and pulls you flush against him, grinding hard and fast against your hips. He holds you too firmly for you to even think of getting away, and then his chapped lips are on yours. He tastes like cigarettes. A panicking part of you desperately wants to squirm away, but you don’t dare risk messing up again. He presses a hand to the back of your head and kisses harder, bucking against you, and you think at least this way you don't have to listen to him talk anymore, at least this way he's too greedy for sensation to get angry with you--

You squeeze your eyes shut against the unwanted feeling of his breath against your face. His moans sound disgusting and kind of hilarious coming through his nose. You hang on tight and try not to bite him as they escalate, growing faster and sharper and oh thank god it's almost over--

“ _In the long run, comparing the slights and injustices endured by the downtrodden to the small, if stinging guilty wounds suffered by the more advantaged does no one any good. It is better to cease dwelling on these progress-halting narratives entirely and focus instead on a brighter, happier future for us all._ ”

It's alarming when he peaks. He parts from your lips with a garbled cry and shakes violently like someone in a seizure, his face contorting. He doesn't let you move until his hips stop twitching, and even when his hands slide down your back and rest lightly on your hips, you're hesitant to draw away, lest he pull you close again.

“ _End recording,_ ” says Kankri.

Cronus is a sweaty, grinning mess, his pants and tanktop sloppy with his genetic material and his bulge limp and sticky and half sheathed.

You're going to have to double sanitize your helming chair. _Twice_.

Your flight suit is ruined, and your own mating parts are aching with a mixture of reluctant arousal and the worst friction burn you've ever had, but you don't dare mention it.

You watch him nervously while he tucks himself back into his pants. Chuckling, dreamy, he cracks his eyes open and grins wider at you, the light from the screens glinting off his teeth.

“Heh, woooow. Look at you, what a fuckin' mess. You're a good friend, though. Really.” Cronus pulls you into an unpleasantly damp hug. You grimace and pat his shoulder briskly until he lets you up and rolls his hips against yours meaningfully. “You need a little assistance, champ?”

“N-no! No. I'm. I good.”

“You sure, bro?” He's looking at you all bleary like you're the funniest, stupidest riddle, and you realize there's no malice in him, no secret motive to let him touch you again; riding high on afterglow he’s downright _amiable_. Your ears are ringing and your skin feels numb all over, and nothing in the room looks real, no matter how hard you stare.

You risk climbing off him and stand on wobbly legs. “Yeah. I'm gonna. Go. Clean off.”

“Right on,” he says, unmoving, and salutes you as you leave.

You throw up in the ablution trap when climax takes you, scalding water pounding your oversensitive hide, one hand wringing your raw bulge and two fingers plunged up your nook. You barely even feel it, and what you do feel is a stinging, unpleasant spasm, but at least you're not hard anymore.

The water washes your mess away. Fighting vertigo, you stagger to your feet and point the spray directly into your mouth, washing out the taste and memory of his tongue. Your grip falters and you end up spraying the back of your throat instead, and then you're on your knees again, your bilesac clenching with violent dry heaves as the showerhead flops and wiggles.

Your helmsblock is empty when you return to it, but there's a fresh flight suit draped across the back of your chair. He has boxes of them in storage; you've seen the inventory. On one of your consoles sits a steaming noodle pod and a can of lemon flavored Purge. 

You watch yourself pick up the chilly can and read the label:

_Made with only the freshest tropical ambrosia leech fluids, guaranteed to give you the boost you need to get through your night. Contains: carbonated water, high-fructose corn syrup, ambrosia leech fluid concentrate, ascorbic acid, natural flavor, beta carotene, potassium benzoate, yellowblood 5._

You put the drink down and climb into your cupe.

This is your life. You are a level four helmsman with a mostly-fried think pan, chronic headaches, words that don't come out right, and Cronus fucking Ampora as your Captain and designated culler.

You can deal with your life in the evening.


	2. Chapter 2

You were assigned for culling on your... sixth wriggling day? The sweeps all run together after awhile. Maybe you were five. The agency sent you a letter stating that your blood hue, psionic level, and schoolfeeding scores made you eligible to spend the rest of your developmental sweeps under the care of a qualifying highblood. You joked with your friends that you hoped she was a seadweller with blowfish lips and big tits, but you didn’t tell them that your mandatory participation filled you with more than a little dread.

You’d heard stories about culling, of course. Everyone had. The schedule charts. The strict diets. The surprise respiteblock inspections. The maddening, passive-aggressive punishments. The _cuddling_. 

On the last day of your freedom, your friends threw you a party. It’s the saddest hole in your memory, a vague blur of music and game grubs and junk food and makeouts. You don’t remember their faces. You don’t remember their names. You’re pretty sure you touched a rumblesphere at some point. 

Then you were a ward of the Empire. The next night, they took you away, and later they told you that your hive and lusus had been neatly assigned to some other poor dope with your blood hue. The culling center had you undergo endless evaluations: physicals, emotional tests, counselling sessions, therapy sessions, group hugs. They made you keep a wellness diary. You learned quickly to write what they wanted to read, lest your minders decide to corner you in the conference block and sing affirming songs at you until you begged them to stop.

Between that and the fucking testing--from the littlest tiniest wriggler games to the melt-your-pan-sponge-out-of-your-ears level starship simulations--your schedule was a stressful, busy, constantly supervised blot of time. Mostly you remember feeling suffocated, constantly watched, and it grated on you unbearably.

They had you make an autobiography vid for your potential cullers. You only remember yours because it took a remarkable amount of takes before they could make you list anything besides asses, grinding, party spheres, rusty buckets, and chocolate dipped salty shame globes as your most beloved interests. You only stopped because they threatened you with two solid hours of Pile Time and no dessert after dinner.

Then there was the night of your final psionic assessment exam. Unlike the other tests, you and the nine other prodigies you were stationed with would be installed in your first helming chairs instead of using simulation headsets. Linked together, the test was designed to push the absolute limit of psionic abilities as the group worked as a whole toward a common goal.

If you remember nothing else about that night, you remember the fucking chair. It was almost insultingly comfortable, fitting the curve of your back and ass perfectly. The first warm, wet feel of biowires slithering up your arms and legs was a wrenching shock that only worsened as they crawled painlessly inside. For all you were told that the entire process was perfectly safe, it felt like the chair was _eating_ you, even though you could still feel your fingers and toes in there. You thought it would have almost been better if it _had_ hurt like hell; at least that would have distracted you from the creepily intimate feel of them _connecting_ with you. 

Before your flopping bile sac could expel your breakfast, your sim goggles clicked on and suddenly you were floating weightless in some unknown stretch of deep space, all your senses exploding outward to encompass that of your ship--no, not your ship, _you_ , you were the fucking ship, and there were trolls scurrying around inside you, you could _feel_ them--

For a few nightmarishly disorienting seconds, you didn’t know up from down. There was no ground or sky or moons to orient you. There was nothing solid to propel yourself from, just star studded blackness stretching out and out and out forever no matter how much you tried to see an end, a horizon, _something_ , and you knew without needing to be told that if something went wrong you could be left drifting out here, _oh god oh fuck oh god_ , spinning in the dizzy airless soundless nothingness while your crew perished one by one and left you to die slow as bits of you gradually shut down... 

Gradually you became aware that there were nine others having the exact same panic reactions as you, like distressed baby featherbeasts encountering the vast and confusing world beyond their shell for the first time. You were the first to discover that if you directed your mind inward, there were star charts and equations and measurements that gave you a better sense of where you were and how you fit in the space you were in.

It wasn’t long before the others figured it out too. If you concentrated, you could feel their thought patterns. Not in your head, exactly, but alongside it. As a whole it took the group of you roughly a minute and a half to acclimatize themselves--

Only for all of you to collectively lose your shit again at the approach of what your crew determined to be unfamiliar hostile ships. An alarm blared, and it was different from any safety alarm you’d ever heard: there was something malevolent and wrathful about it that made your nonexistent teeth itch for a throat to bite. 

Your crew was busy inside you, shouting orders, manipulating holoscreens, throwing up shields and readying side mounted light turrets, isolytic torpedoes, plasma cannons.

You had motherfucking _plasma cannons_.

And you were right up front with a clear view of what was coming. You would have a chance to be the first to give the enemy your very own personal fuck-you in the form of several hundred missiles to the face. All around you the other ships were readying their own weapons and defenses, adjusting their formation, and you felt strangely proud and fierce. These were your peers, your fellow impressive elites, badass and shiny, all of them ready to fight alongside you.

You don’t recall who shot first, only that one minute you practically had an erection at the thought of kicking alien ass and the next you were all battling for your lives.

Three minutes into the fight, something went terribly wrong. It had nothing to do with the storm of laser fire and percussive rounds. It was one of your own. You couldn’t tell what was happening, only that someone was screaming _it’s too much it’s too much I can’t do this get me out oh god get me out _\--__

__The rapport between you and your team dissolved abruptly as something burst in your thinkpan and went offline, and the loss of that kinship, that flawless collaboration--_ _

__It was heartbreaking._ _

__Suddenly you were back in your body, in your chair, twitching and seizing alongside nine other kids all locked in their chairs as you struggled against the uncontrolled psionic current rolling through you, linking you all together like a chain._ _

__The girl sitting next to you was fizzing like a solstice firework, her spine arched high as she screamed and screamed and screamed, and your only thought was that if you could contain her outburst, give it somewhere to go and burn itself _out_ \--_ _

__Wrenching your hand out of its cylinder proved more difficult than you thought; the cables stayed burrowed in you, and the more you struggled the more they pulled you back in, wrapping tight enough that you could feel your pulse in your fingertips, but then something on your console popped, twitched, and died, and they went limp. The ones still burrowed in you stayed burrowed in, and you felt a gross stretchy giving sensation as they tore and broke, like pulling annelids in half._ _

__Twisting in your chair, you reached out and put your palm to her cheek--_ _

__And your brain detonated._ _


	3. Chapter 3

You wake up thrashing in your cupe, riding a flood of icy panic. Your horns are sparking. Everything registers in blurred, laggy flashes: the hand clamped hard around your upper arm, someone looming, their breath on your face just like his breath was on your face and you’re cornered, _you can’t get away_ \--

Cronus’s livid face swims into view. There are words, but you’re still too out of it to hear them. In his other hand is your bowl of untouched noodles. Your voice comes online: you shriek and knock it away, kicking back against the cupe instinctively, but Cronus only gives your arm a wrenching shake and drags you out. Your back and nape scrapes along the rim, and the impact of your ass hitting the floor rattles your teeth and shocks you the rest of the way awake.

You’re naked and sopor-sticky, flopped on your back with all your limbs flailing, and before you can get any purchase beneath yourself, he’s crawling on top of you and trying to catch your hands, his teeth bared in a snarl as you scream right in his face.

“You melodramatic little fuck, _stop_ \--” He grabs your shoulders and thumps you once against the floor, hard enough for you to choke on your next breath. “ _I SAID STOP IT._ ”

But you can’t, you couldn’t stop now even if you wanted to, not with how your entire body is crackling and twitching and thrashing, not with how the floor feels like it’s pitching and reeling under you. Your vision is full of static and little white swirling sparks. You don’t feel Cronus grabbing your wrists, because your wrists are a thousand miles away from you. Your fingers are buzzing. He slaps you and you don’t feel it; you’re only aware he hit you at all because your head turned with the force of the blow. 

The only thing you do feel is his horrible weight on you, the press of his hips and the bare skin of his stomach from where his shirt rides up slightly.

At some point you almost get a leg up to kick him away, but he only shoves it back and lies flush on top of you, pinning your hands over your head, and oh god, oh fuck, you can’t breathe, you can’t breathe and your lips are numb and he’s saying something about how faking this shit isn’t going to get any sympathy out of him, but fine, he’ll hold you down until your retard tantrum passes so you don’t break the ship.

That’s the worst part about partial seizures. You don’t black out during them. Your senses more or less remain with you, and you often remember them once they're over. And you know for a fact that later, the detail that will stand out the most in your mind is the expression on his face, the slow, dawning thought that he _has_ you and he could do _anything_ \--

He watches you curiously as your symptoms fade, as you’re left shivering there with spasming fingers and ringing ears and blood dripping down your chin from a bitten lip.

“Or maybe I’m wrong, maybe it ain’t sympathy you’re after.” You freeze up as he adjusts himself to lie more comfortably and buries his face in your neck. “Maybe you just want a little _attention_ \--”

Shit. Dread spikes through you and you try to squirm, to shove at him, but your bones feel like they’ve melted. A hoarse whimper escapes you as you try to form words, but you’re too wiped out, they just won’t come. Your brain screams them: not again _NOT AGAIN get off get off get off get off fucking get the fuck off me you fucking fuck **GET OFF**_ \--

“ _Cronus?_ ” 

You have never been so glad to hear Kankri’s voice.

He stiffens and looks over his shoulder. There Kankri stands with grubtoast and tea arranged on a little tray. He is wearing an uncomfortably disturbed expression, somewhere between dismay and nausea, as if he’s unsure whether he should be scandalized or not.

Cronus grunts as he climbs off you and spreads his hands in a shrug. “He flipped his shit and I held him down so he wouldn’t crack his fucking skull open,” he says and shoots you a poisonous look. “Not that a busted head would diminish much of his intellect.”

Kankri rolls his eyes and sighs, plucking at Cronus’s sticky shirt and clucking over his mussed hair. “You are entirely incorrigible, and you have a podcast in eighteen minutes. Do you want your fans to think you crawled out of your cupe and into your chair?”

Cronus blinks at him, strangely flustered. His earfins flush. “What? Uh, no--”

Kankri makes a fond, exasperated smile. “Go on, freshen up. Do your job. I’ll take care of this.”

For a moment Cronus’s face goes all soft and doofy with tenderness, but before he can lean in for a kiss, Kankri paps him on the lips and steers his shoulders toward the door, guiding the breakfast tray into his arms. “Now now, that’s enough of that. Off with you, darling, _shoo!_ And don’t forget to eat!”

You sit up as he turns toward you again. Now that things are calmer, you’re aware of the raw scraped spots on your back. Your shoulders still ache from when he thumped you. You wipe the blood off your chin with your wrist and huddle under Kankri's stare as the smile drops off his face.

“Oh, look at you,” he says unhappily. “You’re filthy.”

Something about the way he says it twists something sharp and ashamed in your thorax, and you hunch your shoulders to your ears. “Thorry.”

“Let’s get you cleaned up. We can talk about what happened later.”

Kankri in a grim mood, in some ways, is worse than Cronus in a rage. Nothing drags you down like his disappointed looks and resigned silences. You almost wish he’d blow up at you, at least you’d know how to react to that -- but this, it makes you feel all of two sweeps old. Instead of just feeling embarrassed, he makes you feel like you _should_ be embarrassed.

He _tolerates_ you, and it’s worse than any confiscated privilege or disciplinary subroutine.

Kankri rolls up his sleeves and helps you into the ablution trap without a word. He holds you steady while you shower off tacky sopor, blood, and tears. He even helps you soap your hair. An absurd thought enters your head: there has to be a fetish for this in the pale porn industry, maybe for someone who likes a bit of humiliation with their papping. You almost snicker, but one look at his face snuffs the urge entirely. He’s looking right through you.

No, this is the least pale thing you’ve ever experienced. It’s anti-pale. Anti-pail, even; there have been times he made you loathe yourself for nights before, to the point where you felt too worthless and undeserving to even get yourself off--

“Mituna, _please,_ ” he snaps, yanking you out of your thoughts just in time to notice that your balance has left you and you’re tottering. Grimacing, you jostle him in an effort not to touch him. He holds you at arm’s length while you laboriously find your feet again and rinse off.

Soon you’re toweled dry and wrapped in a bathrobe. It’s not your cotton one with the moons and planets all over it; that one’s in the wash. Instead, it’s Kankri’s: a solid white plush microfiber garment, with his sign in red on the front. It covers you from neck to toes. Since he’s taller than you and you’re much bonier than he is, you’re left fairly swimming in the thing.

He walks you to the food prep block and bids you to sit while he bustles about making you breakfast, dialing up milk, oats, bran granola, raisins, and wheat germ. Your pusher sinks as he combines all of this in a pan and sets it simmering. At least Cronus lets you eat your fruity sugared grubpuffs. You’re gonna shit out a warp drive if you eat this much fiber.

“I don’t want you to think I’m angry at you,” Kankri says quietly. “I know you couldn’t help it. I just don’t think you know how much you wear on him.”

“Bug he thcarred me--”

He looks at you over his shoulder, his brows furrowed in baffled annoyance. “ _Scarred_ you?”

Stupid. Stupid brain. Stupid tongue. You squeeze your eyes shut and grimace. “FUCK. Ssscared me. I wolk up end he wath screaming. He grubbed-- _grabbed_ me.”

“Language,” he says, automatically. “I think I know the reason. This evening he was complaining that you hadn’t eaten your dinner. You realize that our supplies aren’t infinite, don’t you Mituna?”

You grit your teeth and scowl at the back of his head. Sometimes you swear he’s worse than the fucking culling center ever was. 

“Oh fuck off and wang to the thound of your own voithe thome more, you shitty fucking--”

Kankri stops stirring the breakfast glop. “ _I wasn’t finished speaking,_ ” he says, and something about his soft, severe tone silences you more effectively than if he’d shouted. He keeps his eyes on the pan as he continues. “There’s more to this than wasted food. We’re due for a wellness review in two weeks. A representative from the Two Moons Rehabilitation & Sanctuary for Adolescent Culls will be here to inspect our ship as well as check up on your overall health and well-being.”

When he turns to look at you, you’re surprised to find that instead of wearing the self-aggrandizing buttsniffing face he usually does when he lectures you, he’s making this thin-lipped little frown you don’t know what to do with, and there’s an unfamiliar furrow between his brows.

He’s _worried_.

“Whag will they do?”

“The memo says there will be a brief physical--”

Your blood runs cold. “ _WHAT?_ ”

“Nothing invasive,” he says and holds up a calming hand. “Just enough to update your medical information. After that, they’ll perform a short interview and have you fill out paperwork.”

You stare at your hands and they don't feel like they're yours--you could be a balloon floating just behind your head, watching yourself freak out. Your mouth moves and it's like how you talk in dreams sometimes, the words coming out of you on their own in a breathless rush. "I don't like thith. Kankri. I don’t _like_ thith--”

He sighs and rakes a hand through his hair. “I know you don’t. None of us do. But we’re overdue as it is. It’s best we get it over and done with as soon as we can.”

You don’t know what to say to that, so you simply scowl at your steaming breakfast bowl when he puts it in front of you and try to ignore the increasingly tight feeling in your chest.

“But, Mituna, you must understand. Things weren’t always as stable for Cronus and me before you came along. We… we had some rough patches, where I had trouble finding credible employment and Cronus… Cronus was having trouble finding _himself_ , I suppose. He was able to support us on his stipend, so we never starved or found ourselves wanting for a place to sleep, but it was an emotionally draining time for both of us. Surely you can understand why we worry about you. Maintaining lucrative, positive online presences is an incredibly difficult thing, and should anything go wrong... should word get _out_..." He spreads his hands helplessly. "We could lose everything.”

During his speech, you’ve huddled up in your chair to wrap your arms around your legs, your bloodpump thudding dull and slow in your ears. You can’t look at him. Shoulders hunching, you wring your hands and hide your face in your knees. _Everything._ What an awful word. You could lose everything, and it’s all on you, if you fuck this up they might take you away, they might decide you’re too broken for culling and you’d never see the stars again, they’d put you in this windowless fucking room and just _forget you there_ \--

Kankri places his hand briefly on one of yours, and you’re not sure whether he’s trying to be comforting or if he wants you to still your twitching fingers. “I don’t mean to put pressure on you. You mustn’t think that. But now do you see why Cronus was angry with you? Bruises and blood tests don’t lie, Mituna.” he says, tapping your sore back meaningfully. “You need to eat. You need to stop exacerbating your conflicts. Otherwise, how can we show them we’re caring for you properly? We can’t do that if you don’t _accept_ that care.”

You squirm and grit your teeth. “Shit. Yeah. I’m thorry.”

“I know,” he says and pats your hand again. “Just try to remember that Cronus only wants the best for you, even when he loses his temper. You know that, don’t you?”

You nod jerkily and hazard a peek at him over your knees. His lips twist in an awkward half-smile.

“Good. We’ll get through this, you’ll see. Now eat up, we have a busy night ahead of us. I’m going to try to clean out my inbox. Remember to be quiet while Cronus is working, all right? And sit properly, please.”

“Yeah, okay.” Uncoiling your limbs, you side-eye your breakfast and find that Kankri has placed a grub shaped bottle of honey a grudging distance from your teacup. When you turn back to exclaim your delight, he’s already left the room.


	4. Chapter 4

The girl didn’t make it.

You woke with your pan sponge full of rotten pits where your recollection of the helming accident should have been, but that’s what stuck out the most; a clear, bright pinprick of pain against the dull, throbbing migraine of that first awful perigee. She didn’t make it. 

The weeks passed slow. Sometimes on quiet days when you couldn’t sleep, you’d lie in your cupe and pretend that you could summon fragments of the memories you _could_ remember. They were not so much full-length movies as a jumbled collection of gifs and sound clips and blurry images conjured on the backs of your eyelids. If you didn’t push, if you didn’t force it, you could let them come close and try to keep some of them.

In “7H4GF33LWH3NN03M0T0RSK11LL7H.mov” your docterrorist told you about what happened, explained the new facial scars and why your eyebrows were gone and why most of your hair was singed away. In your mind you heard your erratic pulse, the hissing and clicking and chirring of the monitoring equipment, but when you looked at her lips there was no sound when her diagnosis came out. You could supply the words easily enough: _diagnosis: burnt out, pan-fried globe tickling idiot._

“11NV11S11BL3TW0WH33L3DD3VIIC3.gif” took place some perigees later when you had a seizure during a routine braincase scan. At the time you didn’t know what you looked like, but you’ve seen yourself do it on camera enough times by now that you can fill in the blanks: your minders rushed about while you spasmed and opened and closed your fists and pedaled your legs, kicking sopor everywhere and laughing uncontrollably. 

“D0Y07H11NK7H11S1S4G4M3?.mp3” took place some weeks later, when one of the medicullers asked you to name as many animals as you could that started with the letter S:

“Thqueakbreatht. Thlitherbeatht. Thhthlltbthhtptbthpt.”  
“Go on, you’re doing very well.”  
“EAT A SHIT SANDWATCH BATCH I FFFUCKING HATE THITH AND I HAT YOU.”  
“You don’t mean that, honeybee. C’mon, just a few more.”  
“Thorry. Did I thlay thlitherbeatth?”  
“Yes.”  
“Thriek bat.”  
“That’s a Fiduspawn creature, Mituna.”  
“SO FUCKING WHAT IT STILL COUNTH.”

"L333333R000000YJ4444NK11N22.mov" featured you in your very first flight sim game since the accident. You were flying a stupid wriggler ship in a stupid wriggler asteroid field that you were supposed to navigate by flying through little glowing hoops. But before your cognitive coach had time to finish his instructions, you kicked all your thrusters into high gear and launched yourself into the game head-on. 

Later, you wondered if a recording of the incident actually existed somewhere in your files: footage of you shorting out the mic with your shrieky cackles while you mowed right through the rings of some nearby fuchsia colored planet, all your alarms blaring, your instructor wailing at you to stop.

You tried to hold on to the funny shit, the epic stuff, because the more you giggled to yourself about that time you got in a race with some other troll during physical therapy and won by faceplanting the finish line (1700KMYF34C34ND11THR3211TONTHEGROWND.mov) the less time you spent dwelling on all those afternoons you stayed up crying until you dry heaved, or that time you threw a plastic cup at someone because your head hurt and you didn’t want to answer their questions, or all the times you tried to articulate what you wanted or needed and nobody could understand you and it just made you _so fucking angry._

Some days, lying in your cupe, unable to sleep, these clips and fragments of memory were all you had that let you imagine living any other way.

*

Eventually your hair and eyebrows grew back. The thin, slightly raised scars crackling across your eyes and forehead went from an angry yellow to a light gray that was only slightly paler than your normal complexion.

Almost half a sweep after the accident, your medicullers learned enough about your conditions that they were able to craft you a helmet. The moment they fit it over your head it felt perfect, from the tightness of the chin strap to the way it settled snugly around the bases of your horns. 

Supposedly it was to help combat your vertigo and balance issues, but you liked it because it gave you a barrier between you and everyone else, where you could look anywhere you wanted in total privacy.

Plus they let you pick the colors. 

Not long after that, they declared you recovered enough to halfway function again, and your interviews with potential cullers began.

It was a surprise to learn that, in spite of your “unique impairments” and unpredictable behavior, you were more cullable now than ever. Your story couldn’t be more tragically beautiful if they wrote it themselves. Not that they didn’t try: On your bio page, they broadcasted your prodigy-level test scores and psionic levels before revealing all your pathetic mishaps and disasters now that you were broken, urging applicants to search their decency vesicles and consider whether or not they were up for the special challenge of keeping you.

You suspected your popularity had something more to do with the fact that after Her Loving Resplendence took on a yellowblooded helmsman, it wasn’t long before everyone was gagging for one too, not to mention the added privileges and stipends they would receive once they took in your loopy ass.

So you decided that if they were expecting a challenge, you were going to _give_ them a goddamn _challenge._

Before your handlers learned to start warning newcomers of your “dramatics”, you were able to scare away the first few cullers who met you by clutching at your helmet and emitting just enough psionics to make an impressive crackle while you thrusted your pelvis wildly and screamed “ _OOOOH NOOOGE, IT’TH HAPPENONG AGAAIIIIN._ ” 

It also earned you fifteen more penalty points to your already extensive collection. This meant you got to spend a good few hours with The Hug Bot, a faceless, lusus-white, distressingly squishy-yet-resilient device designed to wrap its blobby appendages around you, pull you against its balloon-like belly, and “breathe” while broadcasting bloodpusher sounds and music that sounded like Troll Enya being played backwards. 

After that, you learned to never give a repeat performance if you could help it. The results were even funnier than you’d intended.

There were the two moirails that visited you, both seadwellers, with cute preppy pirate clothes and matching diamond tattoos on their wrists. You sat and watched them while they fidgeted in their chairs and muttered, “This is the only pissblood they have available right now?” “Cod, he’s fugly. And why does he keep licking his teeth?” “I don’t minnow, the site said he was a fucking Gemini, you’d think--”

You startled both of them by slapping both palms repeatedly against the table and shouting, “WHAT ARE THEIR NAMETH??”

“Their names? You mean our names?”

“No bathhole _THOTHE_ ,” you said, pointing at their rumblespheres. “‘Cauthe fuck if I’m not teh lugckiest matherfucker on the plonet scoring TWO hawt lil damthelfish like youge, _EHEHEHEHEHE_ , like, DAMN, thure, I’ll be your grub, adopt me alreedy and lemme motorboat thothe--” At this point you started crawling across the table, breaking their spell of frozen horror, and the pair of them nearly fell out of their seats scrambling out of the room.

Your next victim was a blueblood captain who wore a poofy silver wig and glittery regency makeup that made clown cultist masks look boring. 

You started things off by sneezing messily into your hands before shaking both of his. “A PLEATHURE TO THEE YOU THIR,” you lisped, spraying every word.

“ _UGH!_ Oh god, don’t try to hug me you _disgusting_ \--” 

You watched him peel off his gloves and put a fresh pair, which you sneezed on again.

“Moons above, sit DOWN you little goblin.”

“Thorry, I think I have allergieth.”

“Your case history made no mention of allergies. What are you allergic to?”

“ _SHITTY WEAKTHLIME THLURRY THNORTING BUCKET THUCKING **HIGHBLOODTH** AND THEIR FUCKING GROTH COTHMETICTH, **THIR.**_ ”

He was on you in a flash, but before he could so much as slap your grinning face, four staff members burst in to pull him off you--but not before you licked a slobbery line from his chin to temple and raspberried right in his face.

That stunt lost you all your leisure privileges for a week, which you wouldn’t have been able to enjoy anyway because it turned out licking makeup actually gave you hives, who fucking knew? They also made you make him an apology card for spitting on him, which you stated was entirely unfair because you were just giving back the makeup you licked off.

For all tales of your behavior spread, it didn’t stop highbloods from showing up to interviews. There was the indigo steampunk chick you scared away by staring at her unblinkingly and saying “Are _you_ my luthuth?” in reply to all of her questions. Another evening you regaled an audience of three with on-the-spot bucket themed slam poetry recited out of your ass, with you bent over and puppeting your buttcheeks--which you didn’t end up completing after a sudden fit of vertigo made you fall on your face.

Your minders got more and more creative with their punishments. You wrote so many apology notes (with them hovering around all the while to make you start over again if you tried to write anything untoward) that you learned to dread the sight of their pressed flower culling center stationery. They tried everything they could think of to calm you, from restricted environmental stimulation therapy to adjusting your medications. 

If anything, they learned you were even less inhibited (and slurred more) when you were doped up.

And so the cycle continued. It wasn’t as though the culling center could threaten you, hurt you, or kick you out--as a ward of the Empire, the worst they could do to you, by law, was gently nudge your behavior in the right direction using every ethical tool and technique at their disposal.

They told your interviewers that you were just acting out, it was quite normal for damaged trolls your age and that you would grow out of it in time, when all you wanted, all you _required_ , was for just one of your culling applicants-- _any_ of them--to look at you like you were a person when they first set eyes on you.

But no one ever did.


	5. Chapter 5

The two weeks leading up to your wellness review are about as chaotic as you imagined they’d be.

You learn that Cronus, having his own Captain's review to worry about, would have very little to do with your own preparations. Kankri deflated your initial relief at that news by drawing you up a fucking contract. It’s a long contract, a sea of red text that makes your eyes glaze over just trying to read the first page. He goes over it with you paragraph by maddening paragraph, explaining how he would be supervising your wake and sleep cycles, your meals, and your schoolfeeding to ensure that everything about your inspection goes as smoothly as possible.

Kankri's plan involves shrinking your leisure time to half an hour after you wake up and half an hour before you go to bed. The rest of your evening is neatly categorized down to the last minute, with the implication that deviating from this schedule is not an option.

“Now, I understand it may look a little daunting, but I’ve only written this up to cement the enormity of the situation in your mind, Mituna. I also want to make sure that the three of us are all on the same page regarding the time charts and new routines.” He taps the already tidy bottom edge of the contract against the table’s surface once, twice, three times. “And all that aside, now that I’ve examined the matter more thoroughly, I do think we’ve been being very lax with your caretaking for far too long. Perhaps this is just the inspiration we need to--”

“Per _HAPTH_ I am not _HERE_ to inbulge your DISCUSTDANK PALE FREESOME WANK FANTASIES, **_KANKRI_**.”

He seizes your wrist before you can say another word, squeezing hard enough to make the little bones grind, sending nervy shocks up your twitching fingers. It’s so unexpected that you freeze up, gaping at him in mute horror instead of exploding into motion like you do sometimes when Cronus does the same thing.

It was something you never expected, not from Kankri. He’s never once hurt you physically, not even on your worst days, and underneath the shock of it you feel a stab of miserable shame that you finally drove him to do it.

“My friend,” he says, looking at you in profound disappointment. “You are coming perilously close to ruining our lives and yours. Please try to take this a little more seriously.”

A rush of numbness and prickles sweeps up your hand when he lets go, and you instinctively tuck your arm close to your chest, under your chin. You’re trembling all over and it feels strangely belated, like your thinksponge only remembered that you were supposed to a few seconds too late. “I. I’m. I’m. I’m. _I’m_ \--”

“I know you’re sorry. You can prove it to me by behaving like the proper helmsman I know is in there somewhere.” He doesn’t ruffle your hair, but you can sense him thinking about it. His lips curve into a smile. “Now, let’s discuss your meal plans."

Your contract includes a list of banned substances that you will be allowed to have back in the event that your review goes well. This includes your coffee, raging lusus sodas, and energy shots. No more noodle pods or freeze dried ice cream or jelly grubs where you bite the head off and drink the strawberry goo inside. It’s only good and wholesome food for you from here on out. The menu makes you want to gag just thinking about the texture of unseasoned brown rice topped with limp, miserable steamed vegetables or those cans of black beans Kankri inexplicably loves that always taste like mold and depression to you.

Had your wrist not been throbbing still, you might have forgotten yourself and threw another fit. At least the culling center let you have fucking dessert.

As the nights pass, you learn that he is particularly ruthless about hygiene. He doesn’t go so far as to help you shower, but he threatens to if you take too long. He inspects your hair after each ablution to make sure you got all the soap out. He even supervises your teeth brushing.

One early evening you spend what feels like a small eternity getting your claws trimmed and painted. (Not only does the priggish little twat refuse to let you pick out the polish, but he paints them _clear_.) Then, while they dry, he instructs you to sit with your hands held out in front of you to prevent them from getting smudged while he works on your horns and quizzes you on vocabulary words.

“Define ‘acquiesce’.” he says while polishing your larger left horn to a high gloss with his funny little keratin grinder. It isn’t loud like you’d expected it to be--in fact, it makes very little noise at all, except when he brings the disc to your horn and it sends a hilarious low pitched whir through your whole head that makes your teeth and tongue buzz.

It feels good. Yet, for all Kankri’s hands are slow and gentle, there’s something weirdly sadistic about this particular procedure. Every time he polishes a rough spot, the sudden pleasant rattling in your skull makes you instantly forget what you were saying or doing. You're sleepy as hell, he _knows_ you're sleepy as hell, and yet here you are in his plush computer chair, your brainmeat being massaged into pliant goo while he torments you with questions.

You can't even depend on your energy drinks to help you try to look alert.

You make some halfhearted thinking noises. The heat of him standing just behind you isn’t annoyed or salacious, though. He’s--calm. Professional. You can just let him work on you, as if you were nothing more than a workspace he was diligently scrubbing.

“Mituna? Are you listening?”

“Whaaa…? Thay it again.”

“Acquiesce.”

Acquiesce. Ac-qui-esce. It all sounds like nonsense syllables in your head, not a real word at all. Nothing sounds like words, especially not after he puts the keratin grinder to one of your smaller horns so gently that it makes your eyelids flutter. You blink involuntarily as he taps that same horn with his index finger a moment later, just firmly enough to get your attention.

" _Please_ focus. We have much to do tonight, and this doesn't even begin to cover what I'd like to accomplish."

"Thorry. _Sss_. Sorry." you grimace around the word, your shoulders hunching.

"I know," he says, setting the keratin grinder aside. He guides your shoulders back down and gives one a pat. "I honestly didn't expect this to eat up so much of our time. If only your horns weren't so rough in places..."

"Are my fingats. Fnnnn. Fingers okay?" You show him your claws hopefully.

"Yes, they seem to have dried evenly. Good."

A doofy grin spreads across your face. You realize that this sudden joy at this nugget of approval is kind of stupid--it's not like _you_ did anything to make your claws look good--but it's there nonetheless, you're glowing. He's not so bad, you think, not really. You want him to be pleased. The thought of him _not_ pleased is too horrible to think about. You've known for sweeps that it's all useless in the end, you're fucked up forever, but you don't care. Let him try to turn you into a real troll. Let him cut all your bad parts away and polish you up until you're resembling the thing he wants to see. While it chafed at first, it's sort of adorable now how all your flaws are a personal offense to him, something to hold still and fix until you're Right again. In hindsight, even the times he lectured you or restricted your privileges feels ruthlessly compassionate, and it creates a desperate ache in your chest to think that he was harsh with you because he knew it was necessary.

"Once I finish here, we can pause for breakfast, and then I want to spend some time rehearsing your review questions again. Last time you were entirely too silly--I realize stress affects us all in different ways, but it will be much different when it's an official Wellness Manager asking the questions."

You're aware of him droning on, but the moment he resumes work on your horns again his voice is mostly drowned out by the grinder, leaving you free to sink further into the chair and let your mind drift.

The thought emerges that, underneath all this pretense about wellness tests and preparation, you're a risk and a burden to him, to Cronus, even to the goddamn _ship_ , but if you ignore all of that and only listen to the surface of what Kankri says, you can pretend that he's doing it all for you. 

It's a novel feeling, having someone think you're worth the attention.

You blink out of your thoughts as Kankri turns off the grinder and hastily puts it down with shaking hands. For a split second you can't parse what's going on, partially because even though the grinder's off, you still hear a heavy thrum filling up your ears--

You're purring.

For a few mortifying seconds you can't stop, which only adds a distressed trill to it that's straight out of some soft focus pale porno. Your face stings as you cough and thump your chest until it finally rattles to a stop, and its absence is a weird, sad little void in your thorax.

You turn in your chair, your mouth already open to apologize, but his stricken expression stops you. He's flushed pink and looking at you in unbelieving horror and disgust, both hands clamped over his mouth.

"K-k-kh. Kan. Kankri I--"

" _Don't_." His voice, low and trembling, cuts you off as surely as a slap across the face would have. "Go to your block and go over your schoolfeeds until I come back for you."

You're left gaping after him as he flees the room in three large strides, his head in his hands. The sound of the food prep block door slamming a few seconds later shakes you to your core as everything sinks in with nauseating clarity.

You just chirred and trilled like a diamond-struck idiot at the only troll you've ever met who's valued his moirallegiance over any other quadrant. Idiot. _Idiot_. He was only doing his fucking job and you all but cracked yourself open and let him see the most vulnerable, intimate part of you.

It would have been less obscene if you'd gone off in your pants.

In the end, you can't bring yourself to return to your block, not even when Cronus storms in some time later to find you curled up in the same position you'd been in since Kankri fled, your face buried in your knees, your arms covering your head.

It's almost a relief when he drags you out of the chair without a word and the first kick connects with your ribs.


	6. Chapter 6

You might have been a happy thorn in the culling center's side forever if the greaser seatroll hadn’t showed up one rainy night.

You, admittedly, weren’t at your best that evening. You woke up with a monster of a headache behind both eyes, and the floor felt like it was gently but persistently shifting under your feet, even after you sat at the table and propped your chin on your arms. Everything felt too bright, too harsh,  _ too fucking much, _ and all you wanted to do was crawl back inside your recupracoon and seal yourself permanently inside.

Then your newest victim walked into the interview wearing a shark skin jacket, tight black jeans, and a white tanktop with his symbol on it. Your first thought was that it looked like something a pants shitting pupa would scrawl when it was frustrated with trying and failing to make an actual shape. His pointy boots clicked, and each step he took was like a spike through your pan. 

With your helmet on, you could see his face without him seeing much of yours. You watched him seat himself, pat his slicked back hair, and cough into his fist. “Uh, hey th--”

“Oh my GROD just ffffucking skip to the prat where you peel off thoge thlutty pants, shove your nugbone up your ath, and roll the FUCK out of my life, coming in here pike you’re king wader of slagville, my haid acheth and you thmell like fresh backed shitmuffinth and  **_I hate you._ ** ”

The silence stretched while he gaped at you, wide-eyed. his earfins flared, mouth open slightly. And then he surprised you by throwing his head back and cackling.

“Holy shit!” He stared at you in undisguised, incredulous delight, one hand covering his mouth. “Oh my god, bro, you knock me out! They fuckin’ told me you were trouble, but they didn’t say you were hilarious!”

Your snarl twisted into a confused grimace as he let his head rest on the table and laughed and laughed. 

The words slipped out without you meaning them to: “You thing I’m  _ funny _ ?”

He only nodded and wiped at his eyes while his laughter rang in your head, sharp and genuine and weirdly melodic. You couldn’t be angry that he didn’t take your insults seriously because you’d almost forgotten what it was like to make someone legit crack up--not pity chuckles or mocking snickers but glorious, unguarded shitfits of glee. Watching him completely lose it made you feel like a goddamn champion. 

You wondered if you could make him do it again.

“‘Fresh baked shitmuffins!’ I mean,  _ wow _ ,” he wheezed. “Dig yourself, baby, you’re a riot! What the hell are you doing cooped up in a place like this for?” He shook his head as you gestured sarcastically at your helmet. “No, no, I mean why hasn’t anyone adopted you yet?”

“‘Cauthe I couldn’t be more mindfunked if my medicullerth gracked open my head and used my skull ath a thlurry pail?

“ _ Haaaahaha _ ,  _ god  _ you’re foul. My moirail would flip his wig.”

You grinned. “Ankually, they could all fuck me through boghe ocularth and I thtill wouldn’t have this many dents in my think meat,  _ ehehehehehe-- _ ”

“Seriously,  _ nobody  _ wanted you? Look, I’ll be honest,” he said, spreading his hands and shrugging. “I read what they got on you and I wasn’t impressed, okay? Like, yeah, your scores were high and you still have a lot of potential,  _ blah blah blah,  _ like I need to be spoon-fed that lukewarm sales shit. Like I’d waste my fucking  _ time _ . I know it’s malarkey,  _ you  _ know it’s malarkey, so forget it, right?”

“Tho why didn’t you?”

At that he cracked a small, confidential smile. “I saw your picture, and I just got this  _ feeling _ , you know? And I was right, I don’t think they have the slightest clue how clever you are under that hunk of plastic. It’s no wonder you raise hell like you do, you gotta be bored as  _ shit  _ in here.”

You were struck dumb. For perigees your minders told you over and over how  _ capable  _ and  _ brave  _ and  _ spirited  _ you were even though you were broken, that you could still do great things for the Empire in spite of all your shortcomings and special needs. Hearing it had only augmented your bitter exasperation until it was a dense, concentrated ball of fury in your thorax, and no amount of counseling sessions, nightly songs, or filling pages with phrases like “I am a soaring featherbeast riding the winds of my own potential” made you any more inclined to swallow their glurge.

And then in walked this punkass seadweller with his douchey hair and zig-zag horns and a slick smile that kind of made you want to punch him, and it’s  _ this  _ asshole who understood you right off the bat.

“Anyway,” he went on. “What I think is you oughta be with someone who appreciates your kind of humor and creativity, you know? You don’t have anything to  _ do  _ here. They can talk until the moons fall down about your  _ ‘potential’ _ ,” He rolled his eyes and made quote signs with his fingers, “but that don’t mean shit if you can’t _flourish_ , man. I’d give you room to grow.”

He leaned forward on his arms, hands folded, and the quiet, compelling look on his face made you want to shrink into your chair. 

“And what if I fry your ship? You really wank a lunatic gunning your engineth?”

“Well, hey, it’s like I said, I read your file and your little disability list doesn’t scare me.”

“FUCK YOUGE STONKLORD I’LL SNOW YOU FEAR IN A HANKFUL OF YOUR POOR LIFE CHOICETH,  _ EHEHEHEHEHE _ .”

He snickered. “Hey, I’m just telling it like it is. Correct me if I’m wrong, but… I think we got a thing here, a  _ connection _ , you dig? We’re both creative types. We both got places to go. I could hook you up with schoolfeeds, game grubs, anything you needed. You could learn your helming on my cruiser, I could keep it on manual the rest of the time, and when you got older we could see about deep space jaunts, the real serious shit.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, man,” he said, smiling. “It’s like that hip cat troll Springsteen said, ‘ _ baby, we were born to run.’  _ We could put whole  _ galaxies  _ between you and this shithole.”

“What wath your nameme again?”

“Cronus,” he said, and you found yourself shaking his offered hand before you could decide whether or not you should. His calloused grip was firm and cold. “Cronus Ampora.”


End file.
